THE mystery of a picture featured in The Westmorland Gazette has been solved by a local historian.

The Nostalgia feature in the January 7 edition revealed how a woman in Dorchester found a picture of a woman in a box she bought at auction 40 years ago.

With it was a moving account of the death in action in France during the First World War of Second Lieutenant Francis Henry Stanley Hawkesworth, of Ambleside, who served with the Border Regiment. The finder wondered who the woman was and hoped to reunite the photo with a surviving family member.

Historian John Mander, of Ambleside, believes it to be the soldier’s mother, Mrs Hawkesworth.

He said the Hawkesworths were a prominent family in Ambleside during the early 20th Century and the father served as the vicar of Ambleside from 1907-1922. The Rev Hawkesworth and his wife raised seven sons, three of whom were educated at Kelsick Grammar School, which opened in 1907 as the first co-educational grammar school in Westmorland.

Mr Mander said Mr Hawkesworth was the shool’s first chairman and his sons, Geoffrey and Desmond, were among the first students at Kelsick, attending from 1908-12. Younger brother Noel studied there from 1912-19. The three boys later went on to study at Oxford University.

Mr Mander, who chairs the Kelsick Old Scholars Association, has discovered a photo of the family from 1908 with all seven children, including Francis, though he is not sure which is Francis.

“Of the seven boys, three eventually studied at Queen’s College, Oxford, which is fairly remarkable to say the least,” he said. “Heaven knows how their parents paid for them.” Doris Cook, 87, of Grange-over-Sands, also recognised the woman as the vicar’s wife and said she was a neighbour of hers in the late 1920s and early 1930s. She said: “Mrs Hawkesworth lived in this room in the Lyndhurst house in Newby Bridge and looked after part of the house for a Mr Briggs. She was a proper lady and we always had to be polite to her. She would have been in her 60s or 70s when she lived there but she didn’t seem to be there for long.”

Mr Mander said: “The reverend died in 1922 so his wife would lose the living and the parish home. It sounds like she was forced to work at this house in Newby Bridge. Perhaps this is why only three of the boys went to grammar school.”

Mr Mander’s book, The Triumph of Lakeland Children: Volume 2, The History of Kelsick Grammar School, Ambleside is released later this month.

If you have any information about the Hawkesworths, contact Beth Abbit on 01539-710179.